Grids, The Rule of Thirds, and Rethinking Slide Presentations

I received my contributor copy of Garr Reynolds's Presentation Zen book last week and proceeded to devour it over the weekend. A fuller review is coming to this space soon, because this is the book about presentations that's needed to be written for years, and it's just fantastic. Best of all it's not another recipe book about "how to make slides" -- this is about re-imagining how your entire presentation will work together as a persuasive and integrated show, from conception through delivery. Awesome.

Anyhow, with my inaugural Macworld talk looming on the horizon (T-minus 16 days, thanks), I've been inspired by Garr's book (and the top-notch site on which it's based) to, among other things, try revamping the approach to how slides fit in to my overall show. As I said on the Twitter, that starts with shit-canning the PowerPoint-y Keynote templates I've previously torn up and pasted together for stuff like Inbox Zero (here's the slides for that one, which Garr was kind enough to feature in his book).

But, now, rather than strictly trying to reinvent the wheel, I have a quest. A quest for a crazy-simple, design-centric Keynote template that's more about composition than gradients and 3-D bullet points. Ever heard of The Rule of Thirds?

The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in photography and other visual arts such as painting. The rule states that an image can be divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. The four points formed by the intersections of these lines can be used to align features in the photograph.

Here's a good example off that wikip page. (image by Moondigger [CC-By-SA-2.5])

And the one-third grid works. So much so that in apps like iPhoto '08, the Crop tool automagically adds a Rule of Thirds overlay grid to help you improve the composition of your cropped image. Go ahead, try it.

The Rule of Thirds (and the related Golden Ratio) have come up on Garr'ssitebefore, and on page 151 of his book, he talks about how a grid like this can provide a level of light constraint that makes your layout easier and more harmonious:

Using grids to divide your slide "canvas" into thirds, for example, is an easier way to approach golden-mean proportions, and you can use the grids to align the elements that give the overall design balance, a clear flow and point of focus, and a natural overall cohesiveness and aesthetic quality that is not accidental but is by design.

And, how. So, I want this for Keynote.

I've begun lightly noodling with a new set of Masters that's built around a Rule of Thirds grid (trashing the whole Center MacCentercenter approach), but before I get ahead of myself, I figure why not cast my line towards the more gifted waters of the LazyWeb first...

The Question to You

Have you tried using grids like the Rule of Thirds in your own slide decks? Got a favorite layout or inspiring grid structure that works well for a slide’s aspect ratio? Got great advice on getting out of the stock slide template look? Links to graphical examples welcomed. Winning high-five goes to folks who are willing to share the actual Keynote template they've used.

In an effort to create more effective presentations, I have abandoned the Powerpoint/Keynote environment altogether and started using OmniGraffle for creating slides. Most of my presentations are geared toward presenting rather complex scientific principles to rather non-technical audiences, so a move away from bullet points and text-laden presentations was critical. I find that using Omnigraffle, while it lacks some of the niceties like timers and presenter notes, pushes me to create slides from scratch, based on the particular information that I am trying to communicate, rather than forcing my ideas into pre-defined templates. I make heavy use of the drawing and flow chart tools within OG, which are far better than those in Keynote.

I too was impressed by Garr's golden ratio principle, and implemented a 3x3 layer within OG that I simply turn off when it is time to present. I use it regularly, and find that it improves the consistency of the presentation.

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